City Slang

Lost Light

He lives in an abandoned backwoods shack out by a tract of swampland. He sits in a steel-lined room just a-pickin’ and a-twangin’ on his guitar while he patiently waits for the last drops of liquid to drain out of the sluice sink.

He grew up listening to “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads and “Garbage Man” by the Cramps. He thinks that David Bryne actually is psychotic. He hears Lux Interior yelling at him in his head; telling him to write more songs. He obeys and gives his dissonant offerings titles like “Vampire Victim” and “This Kettle Contains The Heart.”

He keeps a copy of Zodiac Mindwarp’s autobiography next to his stained cot. He often wakes up in the middle of the night and screams until he’s hoarse. Then he gets up and checks the traps to see if he’s caught anything.

He hopes that when they finally catch him, they’ll find the hundreds of cassette tapes which contain the thousands of songs he’s recorded that he knows will make him posthumously famous.

He calls it KILLBILLY music. He got the idea from a Quentin Tarantino movie poster.